Beauty from Ashes: It S More Than Wishful Thinking

“BEAUTY FROM ASHES: IT’S MORE THAN WISHFUL THINKING”

Rehab Addict

August 28, 2011

CornerstoneCommunityChurch

It’s interesting what can be born out of the ashes. I was sitting on my couch on Sunday, October 20, 1991, watching my beloved 49ers play a football game. Not long into the game the camera panned the skies and it didn’t take a viewer long to notice that something very unusual was in the air. It was a thick cloud of smoke, smoke from a very large fire just across the Bay. Before long I had switched off the game and turned on a station that was giving a minute by minute account of a huge fire that had broken out in the Berkeley Hills just north of the Caldecott Tunnel, an area I had driven through every day for three years when I went to law school at Cal. Within a couple of hours of its birth, this fire had become a firestorm, and we watched in awe as one home after another went up in flames. When it was over, the fire had consumed over 1500 acres, had destroyed 3,354 single family homes and another 437 apartments, and had taken the lives of 25 people.

One of the homes that was burned to the ground in the Oakland Firestorm of 1991 was that of a man named Will Wright. Wright is the creator of a number of video games, including one my kids played when they were young called Sim City. A few years later Wright drew on his experience of rebuilding his home and his life after that fire as inspiration for a new video game, called The Sims. If you are a fan of video games, you might know that The Sims has for a number of years now held the title of the best-selling video game of all time. From the ashes of the Oakland Firestorm to a video store near you – it’s interesting what can be born out of the ashes.

Did any of you ever read or hear of the book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut? It’s a controversial book, though it’s rated as the 18th best English novel of the 20th Century. The novel is based on Vonnegut’s experience as an American soldier during World War 2. Captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, Vonnegut spent the rest of the war in a POW camp in Dresden, Germany. On February 13-15, 1945, Allied forces bombed Dresden – it was the World War 2 version of “shock and awe.” In four raids, 3,600 planes dropped over 650,000 bombs on Dresden, creating a manmade firestorm that consumed 15 square miles of Dresden’s finest buildings. There has always been a debate over the number of civilians killed in the bombing. Many alleged that the number was 250,000; in recent years a team of experts has issued a report putting the number closer to 25,000. In any case, the result was that a once proud and elegant city was reduced to rubble and ashes.

But it is not that way today. Since 1990, Dresden has undergone a rebirth. Today, after years of reconstruction, it has regained its stature as one of the cultural, educational, political and economic centers of Germany. What was once largely ashes has been transformed. Beauty has come from ashes.

And you can think of other examples. The Loma Prieta Earthquake caused damage all around the Bay Area, leveling freeways, damaging bridges and destroying homes. But we rebuilt. They are still rebuilding in New Orleans and in numerous other cities that were devastated by Katrina, but progress continues to be made.

But here’s the issue. It’s one thing for a nation to rebuild or for a city to rebuild. But what about when we’re talking about our lives and our families? It’s one thing to rebuild a building; it’s another to rebuild a life. It’s one thing to watch a building go up in flames; it’s another to watch your family go up in flames.

The people of Israel were in ruin on every level. When the Babylonians invaded their land, their homes were destroyed and their most important building – the Temple – had been looted and torn down. They had been taken captive, their wives and children taken away from them and made into slaves. Their dreams for a better life had gone up in smoke along with every earthly possession.

And on some level, we can relate. We know what it’s like to have our hopes shattered, our families torn apart, our health compromised, our jobs lost, and our lives ruined. And we wonder – is there hope? Can things ever be better? Can what has been ruined – can what I’ve ruined – ever be restored? Or is that simply wishful thinking?

In Isaiah 61 the prophet brings good news to the people of Israel, and to you and me. God can bring beauty out of ashes. That which lies in ruins can be restored. It’s not just wishful thinking. It can happen; in fact, Isaiah says, it will happen.

God Can Bring Beauty Out Of Our Ashes

Let me read for you the good news of Isaiah 61, the good news the people of Israel were so desperate to hear:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations … And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God. (Isaiah 61:1-6)

Even if you’ve never read Isaiah, some of those words likely sound familiar to you. Those first few verses happen to have been the text for Jesus’ very first sermon. I was 20 when I preached my first sermon. My brother Dave was a pastor of a small church in Alberta, Canada and invited me to spend a summer working with him as his assistant. I remember how excited I was to preach my first message. And I was sure my Mom would want to hear it, so I made a cassette recording of my sermon to send her. At the end of my sermon I added a tape of some noises made by my Mom’s first grandchild, Dave’s son Jesse. Jesse was less than a year old, and the tape I made was of Jesse laughing as we played with him in one of those jumpers you hang from the door jam. So I mailed my Mom the tape and waited for her response, eager to hear what she thought of her youngest son’s first sermon. The next week I got a letter from her (this is back in the days when we actually sent letters through the mail). I read the letter, and then I read it again – there was nothing about my sermon, not a single word. But boy did my Mom enjoy the tape of Jesse laughing!

Jesus’ first sermon was a bit more memorable than mine, and thanks to Luke we even have Jesus’ text. Here’s Luke’s account of that very significant event:

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit … He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:14-21)

How would you answer this question – what’s your fondest wish? Do you ever think about that? Do you ever sit out on your patio and daydream about how you would like your life to look, ever sit out at night and wish upon a star? The people of Jesus’ day, who lived under the rule of the Romans, had a wish – their wish was for the Messiah, the Anointed One, to come and set them free. Their wish was for the promises of Isaiah 61 to become a reality. So imagine their shock when Jesus reads that very passage and then announces to them, “OK, it’s time for your wishes to come true. Today is the day you’ve been waiting for.”

Now Jesus didn’t do for them exactly what they were expecting him to do. He didn’t remove the Romans from power; he didn’t open the prison doors and set all the political prisoners free. Frankly, very little changed in their world on that Sabbath day. And yet, as we who have read the rest of the story know, we who know all that Jesus did for them and for us, from that point on everything really did change, in ways far more significant than their wildest dreams. Blind men were given back their sight, the lame had the use of their legs restored, and many who were in bondage to sin’s addictive power were set free.

But here’s what we are hungry to discover this morning – what can the Promised Messiah, the Anointed One promised in Isaiah and come to earth in the person of Jesus, do in and through us? Philip Yancey has authored a number of best-selling books; his most recent book is called “What Good Is God: In Search Of A Faith That Matters.” And that’s what we want to know, isn’t it? When life is hard, when our dreams have been dashed, when the pain is inescapable, when nothing is working, what good is God?

I saw a musical in downtown San Jose a few weeks ago; it’s sort of a spoof of Sesame Street. The gist of the story is that all of us who grew up watching Sesame Street were taught by that show that we’re all special and that we’re all going to live adventurous, meaningful lives filled with lots of love and laughter. But then we grow up and discover that life often doesn’t work that way, that life is often far more disappointing than we had been led to believe. So the cast of this Tony Award winning musical called “Avenue Q” sings this as the opening song – “It Sucks To Be Me.” One character, Brian, tells us that he’s been out of college for ten years, that he had dreams of being a famous comedian, and now at the age of 33 he’s just been laid off from his job at the caterers. Another character, Kate, laments that she’s pretty, smart and has a big heart, but she’s 33 and still doesn’t have a boyfriend. And on and on it goes as each character explains to the audience that “it sucks to be me.”

And from time to time, we’ve all felt that way. And when we do we sometimes wonder, “What good is God? What can God do to help me in my disappointment and my disillusionment and my discontentment?” What good is God when our dreams have all gone up in smoke?

Here’s what Isaiah said the Anointed One would do for us; here’s the good he promised to be for us – he would comfort all who mourn and provide for all those who grieve; he would bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. Now those are all images of a person getting a wardrobe change, something I am often told I might benefit from. In those days people who were grieving would put ashes on their head, but the Messiah promised to remove the ashes and replace the ashes with a crown of beauty. There’s something about wearing a crown that’s fun. How many of you have ever in year life put on the Burger King crown? It’s just cardboard, but for some reason it’s kind of a pick-me-up, at least for some of us. So imagine the King of Kings taking a washcloth and wiping the ashes off your head and then placing an expensive, exquisite crown on your head, a crown of beauty. Then picture him anointing you with the oil of gladness. By the way, that’s one way the New Testament describes Jesus; in Hebrews 1:9 we are told that Jesus was anointed with the oil of gladness or the oil of joy. Jesus was not a sad, mopey person. Jesus didn’t walk around singing, “It sucks to be me.” We don’t always catch it when we read the Gospels, but when we dig into the background of Jesus’ sayings we realize that Jesus actually said a lot of funny things. And when Jesus comes into our lives, part of what he does for us is to bring joy into our lives, to anoint us with the oil of gladness.

And then the Anointed One will give us new clothes to wear – he will dress us in a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. Have you ever experienced despair? At some time or another, we all feel it – despair over the loss of a spouse, despair from the news the doctor gave you, despair over the loss of a large sum of money. It’s that sick feeling that starts in your stomach and reaches to your toes when you realize that you’ve just lost something or someone important and that you’re never going to get them back, that your dream or your relationship is dead and gone. Have you ever got caught in a rainstorm and found yourself drenched from head to toe in cold, wet clothes? That’s what despair feels like. It sticks to you; it makes you feel about 100 pounds heavier; it makes everything you do a chore.

But the Messiah of Isaiah 61 has a change of clothes to offer us. He offers to exchange our spirit of despair for a garment of praise. I was backpacking one summer in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Northern Minnesota with my friend Paul. One day was particularly miserable. We got caught in a downpour out in the middle of a lake, then we had to portage across a muddy trail through wet overgrowth. I’m pretty sure I whined most of the day. But that night we peeled off our dirty, wet clothes, got cleaned off in the lake, and put on some warm, dry clothes. Then we cooked our dinner and sat there looking up at a night sky that was lit up with more stars than I had ever seen, and my grouchy mood disappeared. The despair lifted and was replaced by a garment of praise. And that’s what Jesus, the Anointed One of Isaiah 61 and Luke 4, offers to do for you and for me here and now. He offers to give us an extreme makeover, to give us a new wardrobe, to bestow on us a crown of beauty instead of ashes, to anoint us with the oil of gladness instead of mourning, to fit us with a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

God Can Use Us To Bring Beauty Out Of Other’s Ashes

But Isaiah 61 is about more than what the Messiah can and will do for us. It’s also very much about what the Messiah can and will do through us. Part of the promise of Isaiah 61 is that God can use us to bring beauty out of other’s ashes. Look again at what Isaiah writes next:

So who is Isaiah referring to here; who does he mean by “they”? Who will be called oaks of righteousness; who will rebuild the ancient runs and restore the places long devastated? “They” refers to those who had been in mourning until they met the Messiah, those who were given a crown of beauty instead of ashes. Once God raises us up out of the ashes, he deputizes us to do the same for others. We who are the Body of Christ are the ones who are called and equipped to rebuild the ancient ruins and to restore the places long devastated.

Lucas McCarty is the only white person in an all black church in Moorhead, Mississippi called the Trinity House of Prayer. How Lucas got there is the subject of a book by T.R. Pearson called “Year Of Our Lord.” Lucas was brought to Trinity by John Woods, who is now a pastor. But long before he became a pastor, John Woods’ life was in ashes. In 1987 Woods got in a gun fight with his sister’s husband, after he found out that the man had beaten his sister with a lead pipe. Convicted of manslaughter, Woods went to prison. Here’s part of the account of what happened to him there: